Called by God to fill God’s mission
The Rev. Jimmie Hawkins stirs Young Adult Advisory Delegates by preaching about God’s call on young people
MILWAUKEE — About 80 Young Adult Advisory Delegates heard a sermon Thursday from the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins, Advocacy Director for the PC(USA) in Presbyterian Life & Witness.
Hawkins used Matthew 22:34-40 as his preaching text. He noted biblical examples of young people being called by God to fill God’s mission, including the calling of young Isaiah, young Jeremiah and Paul’s classic advice to young Timothy.
“You are Young Adult Advisory Delegates, a role of tremendous importance in the life of the church,” Hawkins told the YAADs. “Obviously, you want to serve God by the service you are rendering. You want to be faithful to being a disciple of Jesus to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God. You want to do God’s will as a Presbyterian, part of a church Reformed and always being reformed.”
He asked YAADs to consider how they can know they are being called by God.
First, he said, there’s an “internal urging” to do God’s will, an “unrelenting desire to follow Jesus wherever he leads.” That’s not easy, because “we live in a world that seeks to resist his teachings.”
There’s division within the body of Christ as Christians rush to judge one another, Hawkins said. The trouble with that is that Jesus warns us that “by the same measure you judge someone else will be the measure by which you are judged,” according to Hawkins.
Isaiah asked God how he could be called when he was still a boy. Jeremiah tried to quit because others were trying to kill him. Even his friends were plotting his downfall. Then young Jeremiah concluded, “the Word of God was like a fire burning within me, and I cannot resist it.”
Hawkins encouraged YAADs to pay attention to “the sense that there is more to your life than you can see or explain.”
“The words of the prophets won’t let you sleep. We are called to desire justice for everyone,” he said. How can we be satisfied, he asked, with what we see in the world — wars, hunger, neglect and division among God’s people?
“We have political leaders who misquote scripture to say that God is a god of war, that we are good and others are evil — that our actions are just, because God is on our side,” he said. We should instead be asking, “are we on the Lord’s side? Do our actions coincide with those of Jesus and reflect his will?”
Use the gifts and the tools with which God has blessed you, Hawkins advised the YAADs: love, honesty, integrity, truthfulness and service.
Hawkins recalled the “Drum Major for Justice” sermon the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. offered a few months before he was assassinated. King wanted to be remembered as one who beat the drum, leading the way. “If you want to say I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice,” King said. “Say that I was a drum major for peace, that I was a drum major for righteousness.”
Hawkins quoted Mahalia Jackson’s “If I Can Help Somebody”:
“If I can help somebody as I pass along
If I can cheer somebody with a word or song,
If I can show somebody he’s traveling wrong,
Then my living will not be in vain.
If I can do my duty as a Christian ought,
If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought,
If I can spread the message as the master taught,
Then my living shall not be in vain.”
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